Ice is rapidly disappearing in the Canadian area of the Arctic. Researchers Marc Cornelissen and Philip de Roo are presumed drowned after they appear to have broken through the ice while on a scientific expedition.
Photograph: Justin Hofman / Barcroft Media

In a voicemail on Tuesday, Dutch researcher Marc Cornelissen, founder of Cold Facts, an organization supporting scientific research in polar regions, laughed at his predicament. He explained that unexpectedly warm weather had forced him and fellow explorer Philip de Roo to complete that afternoon’s skiing in the Canadian Arctic in their underwear.

“I’m glad you guys don’t have pictures of us on the ice,” he said with a chuckle. “But it was the only way to deal with the heat.”

The same heat had also contributed to melting the sea ice near Bathurst Island, the researchers’ ultimate destination. In his voicemail, Cornelissen said the pair might have to take a detour to the north as there seemed to be thin ice ahead of them.

That message turned out to be tragically prescient. The next day, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Resolute Bay received an emergency distress message from the team, approximately 200 km south of Bathurst Island. A pilot flying over the area spotted the pair’s equipment in an area with poor ice conditions and open water. Their sled dog was found sitting on the ice nearby.

Cold Facts researchers on the ice Photograph: Cold Facts

No further traces of the explorers were found. On Friday, police called off the search.

Collaborating with other scientists working in the region, the police are attempting to use any available information about the area, as well as recent satellite images from Nasa and the European Space Agency, to try to recover the bodies. So far, the mission has been hindered by the same poor ice conditions that apparently proved fatal for the Dutch explorers.

Cornelissen and de Roo departed Resolute Bay for Bathurst Island on 6 April as part of the Last Ice Survey expedition, with the goal of exploring and researching an area known as the Last Ice Area. Both were experienced polar explorers and researchers.

In addition to his work with Cold Facts, de Roo traveled to Antarctica in 2000 to conduct climate research on behalf of the World Wide Fund for Nature.

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Climate and sea ice models have indicated that the region in the high Arctic of Canada and Greenland, where Cornelissen and de Roo were gathering data, will be the last stronghold of summer sea ice as the planet continues to warm.

“We think we see thin ice in front of us, which is quite interesting, and we’re going to research some of that if we can,” Cornelissen said in his last message.

Models have projected that summer sea ice will remain there through 2050. Ice researchers in the area hope to determine whether those predictions will bear out. Meanwhile, the World Wildlife Fund is spearheading an effort to launch a sea ice management program in the area to protect the ice for polar bears.

The type of thin ice Cornelissen and de Roo encountered could be an obstacle to that effort. According to Stephanie Pfirman, an environmental science professor at Barnard College, the latest research brief on the area indicates the region has “less and less of the thick, old ice that persisted from one year to the next. Because the ice is thinner, it is easier to melt all the way through, making it more vulnerable to future warming”.

Canada’s Arctic ice has been melting at a rapid rate since 2005, according to a 2014 memo from the country’s environmental agency, Natural Resources Canada. The National Research Council presented a report earlier this month that backed up this research.

“The Arctic is warming faster than just about any place on Earth,” Pfirman said in a conference call about the report. “And the Arctic winters are much milder than they were in the past.”

Cold Facts’ mission has been to gather data in the world’s polar regions to feed into various ongoing research projects, and information from this expedition would have contributed to the work of scientists studying the rapid melting of the Arctic. “We feed data into existing research activities and do not aspire to be a research program in itself,” the group’s website explains.

Sadly, gathering further data on the rapidly deteriorating Arctic seems to have cost de Roo and Cornelissen their lives.

Marielle Feenstra, a spokeswoman for Cold Facts, said the organization would keep the public informed on the progress of the recovery mission, and that it plans to continue the work Cornelissen and de Roo started.

UPDATE: On 12 April, the Guardian received news about the recovery efforts from Cold Facts: “During a risky recovery operation, a team of local volunteers and Canadian experts retrieved a body at the location of the accident. The Canadian coroner has identified the body as that of Marc Cornelissen. An extensive search at the scene did not find the body of the second polar explorer. The status of Philip de Roo remains missing.” The sled dog accompanying the pair was rescued from the ice unhurt.